Role

Feature Designer, Balancer & Producer

Description

“Yokai Parade” is a 2D platformer with a focus on speedrunning. It’s based in a Asian myths inspired world, which houses lots of different yokai.

The goal is to reach the end of each level & and ultimately the Parade in a timely manner, by taking over the abilities of the yokai in your path.

Yokai Parade is my 1. semester student project that I developed with a team of 8 people within 10 weeks.

Start & Finish Time

06.01.2025 - 14.03.2025

Genre

Platformer

Platform

PC

Engine

Godot

Game Link

Software & Tools

In the production of Yokai Parade I used & managed the following tools:

  • Google Docs | GDD

  • Godot | Movement Balancing & In-Engine Adjustments

  • Mercurial / Tortoise | Version Control

  • Miro | Team Communication

  • HacknPlan | Kanban Board

  • Google Sheets | Creation & Use of Production Tools

  • Google Slides | Creation of Milestone Presentations

Feature Design

Enemy Design

I designed 2 enemy types with each having three movement states. Since every enemy was supposed to work hands in hands with the main mechanic of the game, which steals their element to enhance the players movement, they had to visually convey the information needed to the player.

For this I kept into close communication with our artist, insuring that the needed information will be conveyed to the player. I also created an Enemy Design Document, to keep track of what & why the enemies needed to do & act.

The enemies also needed a way for punishing the player & since the game revolves around being fast, I decided to let them push & stun the player for a short duration to, for a fit punishment for getting into the enemies’ attack.

Movement Features

The player movements has lots of different elements to make the player movement feel as smooth & rewarding as possible.

As one of a few examples: The Speed Token System. It gives the player a reward for playing flawless, by giving them a scaling amount of extra velocity for each enemy they defeated without halting their movement.

I adjusted every feature & system that affected movement, by testing it myself, then playtesting it, iterating the feature & repeating it until the movement felt as smooth as possible,

Production

Task Management

As a Producer I led meetings, made sure everyone was informed about the state of the projects & managed the task management of the projects.

For example, I created a Burndown Chart to keep in track how far we were behind or ahead of our backlog. When we were starting to fall behind, this organization showed us how much & why we were behind & we were able to make appropriate cuts in our backlog, thanks to the tool.

Milestone Presentations

In the production of each semester project at the School for games, each team has to do a total of 5 milestones presentations split over the 10 weeks.

I created & presented most of the presentation, sometimes with another team member, sometimes alone. I collected all the progress we made and delivered them in a presentable format.

In the here shown video, I present along one of the teams artists the goldmaster for our project.